1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to toy vehicles, and more particularly to small-scale self-powered amphibious toy vehicles.
2. Prior Art
Many toy vehicles have been outfitted for locomotion along both dry-land and water surfaces, by provision of flotation chambers.
Such vehicles are quite delightful, because a user can play with them in a greater variety of ways than vehicles that operate only on dry land or only on water. It is especially amusing to watch such toy vehicles scuttle back and forth across the edge of a pond or pool.
When such a vehicle reaches such a body of water, it necessarily floats along the surface by virtue of the buoyancy of the flotation chambers. On the other hand, a vehicle that lacks such chambers, if its working parts are capable of operation under water, will instead move along the bottom of the pool. This too is an amusing and entertaining second mode of "amphibious" operation.
Heretofore it has not been fully practical to enjoy both of these two kinds of amphibious or quasi amphibious modes of operation in a single vehicle. Buoyancy is essential to "true" amphibious operation--along a water surface--but it also effectively precludes the second type of amphibious operation that is possible with a nonbuoyant vehicle.
In another (and hitherto unconnected) area of prior art, it is possible that there have been some bathtub-type toy submarines or the like with fillable or partially fillable buoyancy chambers. We are not aware of any such toys capable of self-powered motion through the water--in particular none capable of such motion selectably along the surface or along the bottom of the water--and certainly not any that were capable of motion along a dry-land surface.
Thus in the prior art of self-propelled toy vehicles, as far as we know, none have been operable in more than two of these three "media": dry land, water surface, and water bottom.